School Choice: The Debate Isn’t About Choice
Few terms in education have been more misunderstood, redefined, and politically weaponized than school choice.
At first glance, the concept sounds simple enough: parents should have the right to choose where their children attend school. Who would be against that? No one, really. In fact, most Americans, regardless of political affiliation, support that idea.
The reality is that parents in North Carolina already have school choice, and they always have.
Families can choose a traditional public school, a charter school, a private school, homeschool, or virtual school. No law prevents those options. No serious public education advocate is trying to eliminate those options. Parents are free to make the educational decision they believe is best for their child.
So if parents already have school choice, why is this such a hot-button issue?
Because the term school choice has been redefined.
Today, many political and advocacy groups use “school choice” not to mean the right to choose a school, but the right to choose a private school and have taxpayers pay for it.
That is an entirely different debate.
Private Choice vs. Public Funding
The current argument is not whether parents can choose private schools or homeschool their children. They can. Nothing is preventing that choice.
The real argument is whether public tax dollars should be used to fund those private choices.
Supporters of private school vouchers often argue that “the money should follow the child.” That sounds reasonable until you examine what happens after the money leaves the public system.
Traditional public schools and charter schools are both publicly funded institutions. Because they receive taxpayer dollars, they are subject to state and federal laws, constitutional protections, financial oversight requirements, audits and accountability systems. Charter schools do have greater operational flexibility than traditional public schools, but they remain public schools and retain a degree of accountability to taxpayers. They are authorized by the State Board of Education, receive public funding, and participate in North Carolina’s testing, assessment, and accountability system.
That said, there are important differences between traditional public schools and charter schools.
Under North Carolina law, teachers in traditional public schools must hold appropriate state licensure and certification in the subject areas they teach. Charter schools are only required to have at least 50 percent of their teaching staff licensed, although individual charter school governing boards may choose to require a higher percentage or full certification.
Charter schools are also exempt from certain state requirements that apply to traditional public schools. They are not required to follow the same school calendar laws, they have greater flexibility in selecting curriculum and instructional programs, they cap enrollment and they are not bound by the same class-size mandates that govern traditional public schools. In addition, charter schools are generally not required to provide transportation or cafeteria services, although some choose to offer one or both.
Supporters view these flexibilities as opportunities for innovation and responsiveness. Critics argue that these exemptions create an uneven playing field, particularly when traditional public schools must comply with a much broader set of state mandates while serving all students who enroll.
It is also important to understand how North Carolina’s charter school landscape has changed over the last 15 years. Following the 2010 election, when Tea Party-backed candidates gained control of the North Carolina General Assembly, significant changes were made to charter school policy and governance. The state removed the cap on the number of charter schools that could operate, reduced many of the regulatory guardrails governing their approval and oversight, and created a faster approval process for new charter applications.
What once typically required 12 to 18 months of review and planning could move through the process in as little as three to six months. That is referred to as “fast tracking”. Supporters argued that these changes encouraged innovation and expanded educational options for families. Critics argued that reduced oversight increased the risk of poor governance and weakened public accountability.
Those policy changes also created opportunities for large, out-of-state charter management organizations and for-profit education companies to expand into North Carolina. As a result, the state experienced rapid growth in the number of charter schools. While charter schools continue to receive public funding, concerns remain about whether the pace of expansion has outstripped the state’s ability to provide effective oversight and ensure taxpayer dollars are being used in the public interest rather than to generate profits for private companies.
A local example is Wake Preparatory Academy in Franklin County. Its structure involves Utah-based Schoolhouse Development, Arizona-based Charter One, LLC, and Arizona-based American Leadership Academy. These private entities are connected through a business ecosystem associated with Glenn Way and his business partners. That kind of arrangement raises a serious question: is the school primarily beholden to what is best for students, or to what is profitable? In other words are they choosing profits over students?
That is another blog.
Private schools are entirely different from public and charter schools.
They are privately operated organizations governed by private boards. They are private entities that are privately run and privately funded — or they should be. They are not subject to the same transparency requirements, testing requirements, curriculum standards, hiring standards, or accountability systems that public schools face.
It is also important to understand how little accountability exists once North Carolina’s voucher dollars leave the public system.
North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship program sends public money to private schools, but those schools are not held to the same transparency, testing, curriculum, hiring, reporting, or accountability standards as public schools. In other words, public dollars leave the public system, but public oversight does not follow them.
Taxpayers have limited ability to see how those dollars are being spent, what educational outcomes they are producing, or whether the schools receiving them are meeting the same basic expectations required of public schools. Private schools receiving voucher money are not required to follow the North Carolina Standard Course of Study, administer the same state tests, publicly report student performance in the same way, hire licensed teachers, or serve all students.
That matters because North Carolina’s voucher program is no longer limited to low-income families or students leaving public schools. Recent state data show that only about 11.5 percent of Opportunity Scholarship recipients had previously attended public school. That means roughly 88.5 percent of recipients were not moving from public school to private school. In many cases, voucher dollars are not creating a new choice at all; they are subsidizing a private choice families had already made.
That is why calling this simply “school choice” is misleading. For many families, it functions less like an escape route from public schools and more like a taxpayer-funded tuition discount for students who were already enrolled in private schools.
If public money is going to private schools, then public accountability should follow that money. Otherwise, taxpayers are being asked to fund private institutions without the transparency, oversight, or public obligation that should come with public dollars.
Many private schools do excellent work. That is not the issue.
The issue is whether taxpayer dollars should be directed to institutions that operate with far less public oversight while retaining significant control over whom they serve.
To put it another way: if someone decides they prefer a private country club over a public park, that is certainly their right. The question is whether taxpayers should be required to pay the membership fees for that private country club while having no say in how the club operates or who can become a member.
Public Schools vs. Private Schools
Traditional public schools operate under a fundamentally different mission.
Public schools must educate every child who walks through the door. They do not get to select students based on academic performance, disability status, religious affiliation, family income, behavior history, sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, nationality, or any other factor.
Private schools can establish admissions criteria.
They can require religious adherence. They can require entrance exams. They can decline students they are not willing or able to serve such as students with disabilities. They can set behavioral, academic, or financial requirements. They can establish policies that would be impermissible in public schools.
According to North Carolina law, private school teachers do not have to be licensed or certified. However, the private board that governs that school can certainly require that if they so choose.
Again, that is not necessarily an argument against private schools. Private institutions, by definition, are private.
The question is whether taxpayers should subsidize institutions that are not obligated to serve the entire public.
Homeschooling and Accountability
Homeschooling is another educational choice that many families successfully use.
Homeschool families have significant freedom in determining curriculum, instructional methods, schedules, and educational philosophy. While homeschools must be registered with the state and students must take a nationally normed test annually, they are not subject to the same accountability measures as public schools.
Their test results are not publicly reported. Their curriculum is not publicly reviewed. Their instructional practices are not subject to the same oversight that governs public schools. In North Carolina, the basic requirement for teaching in a homeschool setting is that the instructor be at least 18 years old and hold a high school diploma or its equivalent.
That freedom is precisely why many families choose homeschooling.
The question remains: should taxpayers fund educational programs over which taxpayers have little or no oversight?
The Culture War Component
Complicating matters further is a separate movement that often operates under the same “school choice” banner.
These groups focus less on educational options and more on controlling curriculum, restricting books, limiting classroom discussions, and dictating what teachers can and cannot say.
Over the past several years, public schools have been accused of everything from indoctrination to “grooming” children. Teachers have been portrayed as political operatives. This group as accused teachers of promoting a homosexual agenda, porn in classrooms, teaching students to hate America and pushed stories about litter boxes in schools for students identifying as animals. All of this has been spread repeatedly, despite the complete lack of evidence supporting such claims.
As someone who has spent years in education, I can say with confidence that many of these narratives bear little resemblance to what actually happens in classrooms.
Most teachers are busy trying to get students to complete assignments, stop talking, stay off their phones, focus, and remember where they left their pencils. The notion that educators have developed a secret master plan to fundamentally reshape civilization between third-period math class and lunch duty is, at best, imaginative.
What About Other Countries?
Advocates of privatization often point to international education systems. Ironically, one of the highest-performing education systems in the world offers a very different lesson.
Finland consistently ranks among the world’s strongest education systems.
Education is publicly funded. Schools are funded equitably. Students receive meals, supplies, and support services. Standardized testing is limited. Teachers are highly respected professionals. Educational decision-making is largely driven by educators rather than politicians or corporations.
Perhaps most notably, Finland does not embrace a for-profit education model.
That does not mean Finland’s system can simply be copied and pasted onto the United States. Finland is smaller, more homogeneous, and operates under a different governmental structure. America educates a much larger and more diverse student population.
Still, it is worth noting that one of the world’s most successful education systems achieved that success by investing heavily in public education, not by fragmenting it.
Why Public Schools Matter
Public schools exist to serve everyone.
Not some children.
Not the easiest children.
Not the most profitable children.
Everyone.
That mission is both their greatest strength and their greatest challenge.
Public schools educate students with disabilities, English language learners, gifted students, homeless students, students living in poverty, students experiencing trauma, and students who arrive with every imaginable advantage. They do not get to pick and choose.
As we often say in the South, “Y’all means all.”
Public education is based on the belief that society benefits when everyone has access to an education. We are stronger when more people are educated, informed, healthy, and prepared to contribute to their communities.
That is not merely a personal benefit. It is a public good.
The Question We Should Be Asking
The school choice debate ultimately comes down to one question:
What obligation do we have to maintain a public education system that serves every child?
Without a strong public school system, many families would have no meaningful choices at all.
In rural communities, private schools are often scarce or nonexistent. Some students would be denied admission. Others would face tuition costs beyond what vouchers cover. Some would fail entrance requirements. Others would be excluded based on factors entirely outside their control.
In other words, that private school would not serve those children.
Those children may be left waiting on a school bus that never comes.
Those children do not get a school.
There is no choice for those children.
And when that happens, those students do not simply disappear.
They still deserve an education. They still need a school.
The school that accepts everyone — the school that remains after every other option has said no — is the public school.
That is why public education matters.
Not because it is perfect.
Not because it should never be improved.
But because it is the only educational institution with a legal and moral obligation to open its doors to every child who knocks.
Parents already have school choice. The real question is whether expanding one family’s choices should come at the cost of reducing another family’s.
A public school system exists to serve everyone. It is the one institution that cannot turn children away, cannot pick and choose whom it serves, and must be there for every community. When policies divert public resources away from that mission, the families most affected are often those with the fewest alternatives.
School choice should mean expanding opportunities for all children, not creating opportunities for some while diminishing them for others.
